Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (10 page)

“That is not true. You’re not being
fair.”

She
wasn’t being fair. He
saw no sign of the band of children. They were off playing some other game, and
he was stuck doing dutiful things.

The queen asked her handmaid, “Are
the guards assembled?”

“I’ll look.” She rustled off into
the vestibule.

“Valryk, dear, come here,” Mother
said. Her hand, reflected in the window glass, beckoned for him. When he
trudged back to the vanity, she smoothed his oiled hair with her silver brush.
“Why am I bothering?” she muttered. “We’ll soon be covered in dust anyway.”

“You’re never happy.”

The brush paused, and her green
eyes stopped scrutinizing his every thread and eyelash; though they latched
onto his, she wasn’t looking at him.

“You still have me,” he insisted,
trying to make her smile, but his words had the opposite effect. Valryk wanted
a brother or sister, too; then he would have someone to play with. But the baby
didn’t come when Mother said it would. He’d heard his bodyguards talking. They
were always saying things meant only for grownups, not realizing that he was listening,
that he wasn’t a baby anymore. They said his little brother died only hours after
being born. A weakling, just like the one before and the one before that.
Mother cried so often that she didn’t sit with Father in the Audience Chamber
anymore.
Please, don’t cry again,
he wanted to scream.

She pinched his chin and rewarded
him with half a smile. “Yes, I still have you. And I won’t lose you, do you
understand? If something should go wrong this week—”

“D’you mean assassins?” The idea
made his belly jump and twist with excitement. If an assassin came, Valryk
would show him. He would punch him in the nose and send him to the dungeon with
the rats forever and ever.

Mother set aside the brush. “You
see, the other children aren’t the problem. I’m sure they’re good children. But
an assassin got into the Assembly once before and nearly killed your father.”

“And one got into my nursery! Nanna
told me.”

“Did she? Then you know why I won’t
let you out of my sight this week.”

“Can anybody be an assassin?”

Her eyebrows jumped. “That’s an
astute question. I don’t know the answer.”

“That means yes, doesn’t it? Why
would anyone want to kill Da? Or me? My people like me, Mother. One of them
gave me a pony for my birthday.” He’d been allowed to ride it only once.

Mother’s shoulders sagged a bit. “How
much truth can you afford to hear?”

“All of it! I’m big enough now. I
turned five and a half yesterday.”

A sparkle threatened to return to
her eyes. “Yesterday? My, my. So you did.” She chewed her lip, reached for his
hands, squeezed them gently. “Your people give you gifts because you are their
prince. They want
you
to like
them
. But people hide schemes
behind smiles. You have twelve older siblings who may think they have a
stronger claim to the throne than you do. They can’t be trusted. Eliad may be
the one exception, and yet one can never tell. No, we must be careful, my son.”

She smiled at him then, and Valryk
drew back. What did
her
smile mean? Was she hiding schemes? What
was
a scheme anyway?

Mother stood from the vanity stool.
“Come, I know you enjoy the races.”

Did he? The stupid horses just ran around
and around in circles.

“Tell you what,” she added, “after
the races, we will dine on the lawn, and then you must go to bed. But tomorrow,
during the audience when the rest of us are in the Great Hall, you may summon
Kethlyn here to play chess.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. It would do you good
to get to know your cousin. Hurry along.” She swept off, stiff skirts rustling
like clouds whispering, and Valryk’s heart soared. He didn’t mind so much that
the horses ran around in circles or that he didn’t get to paint his face black.
Not today anyway. But tomorrow, Mother would be downstairs, and then Valryk
would see about that face paint …

~~~~

K
elyn was not happy. His son
managed to track him down during one of the few precious moments of quiet he
could claim for himself this week. He had sequestered himself in his chamber to
change his clothes and rebuild his composure after the morning’s archery
tournament. A thousand details had to be overseen and approved; a hundred
guests had to be kept content. Captain Lissah complained that security was
lacking and insisted the garrison neither sleep nor eat during these hours and
those watches, and so Captain Maegeth brought complaints that her men were
complaining. Lord Helwende, determined to be fatter every year, had nothing but
complaints about the food. The ladies, after sweating in their corsets during
the dances, complained that the cistern water was too hot for baths, and so the
icehouse was almost empty. As every year, Kelyn felt sorry for the staff, who
had to try and amend these petty problems while remembering their courtesies.

Lord Tírandon complained about
everything, chronically disgusted ever since Laral wed the Fieran girl. It was
the scandal of the decade. Kelyn decided that Lander’s new and largely
unfounded rants against Fieran cattle raiders resulted from his damaged pride.
And there was no undoing it now: his traitor of a son had gotten a half-Fieran
daughter, and in his letters sounded perfectly happy about it. “Why shouldn’t
he be happy?” Kelyn had asked Lander that morning at breakfast. “The child must
be almost two by now. How can you still be upset about it? Have you even seen
your granddaughter?”

“Of course not!”

“Why not?”

“If I must explain that to you,
War
Commander
, you’ve gone simple.”

So now Kelyn was simple, and Lander
made sure everyone knew it. He raised plenty of support for his anti-Fieran
cause, whispering and grumbling during the archery tournament, until Kelyn
finally had to tell him, “If I have to lead another army onto Fieran soil, Lander,
I’m blaming you. The history books will not forget it, and the bards will sing
loudly of it, I swear upon the Goddess’s sweet bosom.”

Thus, the second day of the
Assembly was only halfway over, and already Kelyn’s head throbbed with what he
was sure was impending apoplexy. His son’s enthusiastic, high-pitched tale
shattered the brief, stolen moment of crystalline peace. With a change of
clothes draped over one arm and his free fist knotted on his hip, Kelyn glared
down at his son. “Why didn’t you stop her? She should never have been in mews
in the first place. Those falcons aren’t pets.”

“Why are you always blaming me for
stuff she does? I tried to stop her, and I wish those falcons had ripped her
face off!”

The chamber door swung open. Master
Urlen fumed. Rhoslyn reminded Kelyn of a startled pigeon; most likely, the
falconer had been less than tactful presenting his case to her. Carah blinked
fearfully, her cheeks shiny with tears. And Eliad, who carried her, bled
profusely, caught up in the wrong family crisis. The squire set Carah on her
feet and nudged her into her father’s forbidding shadow.

 “Do you realize the trouble you’ve
caused, young lady?” he demanded. “Look at Eliad’s face. Have you learned how
dangerous those birds are? You could’ve been hurt, Carah.”

“I didn’t mean to,” she pleaded. “I
tried to help.”

“Help! We’ve lost our falcons. We
must have them to hunt.”

Carah dug her toe into the carpet
and twisted side to side. Her thumb strayed to her mouth.

Kelyn dropped to his knees, grabbed
her hand away, and added, “If the birds don’t return, Master Urlen will have to
go all the way to Mount Drenéleth to catch new ones, and that’s dangerous, then
train them, and that’s costly.”

Carah shook her head, desperate.
“No, Da!”

“Don’t tell me no. Apologize to
Master Urlen and Eliad both, then go to the nursery where you won’t cause any
more trouble.”

Carah’s face crunched up, and she
broke into sobs. Sometimes Kelyn could tell when she was faking her fits, but
this time the heartbreak was genuine. His chest ached seeing it, but he’d given
his orders. “I-I did ap-apologize,” she stammered, stomping her foot to make
him understand. “They said … the birds said—”

“Go!” Kelyn commanded with the same
implacable authority with which he commanded the king’s soldiers.

Carah whirled and fell into her
mother’s skirts. Rhoslyn managed an unsympathetic frown. “Go on,” she said
softly.

All hope for appeal lost, Carah ran
from the room, wailing at the top of her lungs. When the nursery door slammed
shut, Kelyn sighed and sank into the comforting arms of his favorite chair.
“I’m sorry, Master Urlen. I thought she knew better.”

“No need, m’ lord,” the falconer
replied. “If my birds don’t come back in a few days, I’ll start for Drenéleth.
Maybe I’ll be able to find some of this spring’s hatchlings.” He bowed out the
door, shutting it quietly.

Rhoslyn drew Eliad to her
apothecary cabinet, poured water into a basin, and began sponging away the
blood that had run down his neck. “These gashes are to the bone. They’ll need
stitches, I’m afraid.”

Kethlyn climbed into his mother’s
armchair and leant over the back, the better to see all the gory details. “We
woulda had you that time, Eliad. We’d have surprised you sure.”

Eliad ruffled Kethlyn’s fair hair.
“You think I didn’t know all along where you were hiding?”

Rhoslyn poured extract of wolf’s
muzzle onto a cloth and applied it to the wounds. Eliad winced and jerked away.
“Your Grace, ow!”

She slapped him in the chest. “Oh,
hold still. Whiny warriors are the worst.”

Kelyn had no ear for the banter.
His fingers toyed forlornly with the buttons of the tunic laid across his knees.
He couldn’t stand it when his little girl hurt because of something he’d done.
And something in what she’d said…. His fingers paused. He’d been so determined
that he had talked right over her.

“Kethlyn,” he asked, “what did your
sister mean by ‘the birds said’?”

The boy plopped down in the chair. “She’s
a liar, Da. She said the birds wanted her to open the cages. She said the birds
said they wanted to go home.”

Rhoslyn dropped the bottle of
wolf’s muzzle. “Oh, Kelyn….”

He jumped from the chair as though
it had bitten him.

C
arah lay face-down on her
bed of frilly pink lace. When she heard the door open and shut, her wailing
paused with a hiccup, then redoubled in volume. Kelyn stepped over a doll with
rouged cheeks and a rocking horse—painted dapple-gray like the War Commander’s—and
sat on the edge of the girl-sized bed. He waited for Carah’s crying to trail
off before tapping a doll-like arm. She sniffled deeply into her pillow then
rolled onto her back. Her nose was red and swollen, and her ringlets clung to wet
cheeks.

“I should’ve listened to you,”
Kelyn said. “Your brother told me about the birds. What they said to you, I
mean.”

Carah wiped her nose with the back
of her hand. “He said I’m lying. I’m not!”

“I believe you.” It had been more
than four years since Thorn warned his brother of the signs to watch for. Kelyn
had come to hope that they wouldn’t manifest after all.

“You do?”

He nodded sheepishly. Carah dived
into his arms, and he cradled her in his lap. “You must understand something,
dearheart. You can hear the falcons because you’re special. You have abilities
that most of us don’t.”

She peered up at him through tear-spiked
lashes. “You mean,
you
can’t hear them?”

He shook his head. “If your brother
calls you a liar, it’s because he can’t hear them either. But your Uncle Thorn
can hear them. And when he comes for your birthday this summer, he’ll want to
hear your story. All right?”

“All right,” she said, but the
delicate pleats in her brow told him everything was not all right. Her tiny
fingers stroked the softness of his velvet sleeve, and she said, “They were so
sad, da, the falcons.”

Kelyn sighed; his daughter was too
clever by half. “I’ll tell Master Urlen to forego his trip to Mount Drenéleth.
I don’t know how we’ll catch our doves though.”

“No doves,” Carah exclaimed.

“You mean we can’t eat doves now?”

She shook her head.

“What about geese?” Not that
falcons were used to hunt the larger wild geese, but Kelyn had to learn the
boundaries.

“Geese are fine,” Carah said. “They
chase me in the bailey. They scare me. You can eat the mean ol’ geese, Da.”

Kelyn chuckled. “So gracious of you,
lady.”

~~~~

C
hess was harder than his
War Games. Kethlyn wasn’t sure he liked chess. Uncertain, he started to shift a
pawn forward a space, but the prince’s grin convinced him the move was foolish.
Kethlyn withdrew his finger, tried to see the play that Valryk saw, but decided
it was hopeless. He moved the pawn forward anyway.

Valryk’s shaddra swept in from the
flank and captured it.

“Well done, Highness,” lauded one
of his bodyguards.

Kethlyn glowered at the man. Two
guards watched the game’s progress. Two stood to each side of the parlor
windows. Two more flanked the doors. They were all on Valryk’s side, no
mistake. Kethlyn didn’t like feeling outnumbered. He knocked over his king.

The prince gasped. “You can’t do
that!”

“Can, too. I surrender.”

“We just started. You have to play
until I win.”

Kethlyn sank back in his chair,
arms crossed. He’d rather be down in the Great Hall, forced to listen to the
boring talk of grownups than stuck in here staring at a chessboard and his
bossy cousin. “Is there something to eat?” The cooks had sent Kethlyn and Carah
a large breakfast in the nursery, but the prince’s summons arrived before
Kethlyn could finish it. Anything left from the prince’s own breakfast had been
swept away.